Tag Archives: Telesur

Why is Chávez squandering his most valuable asset to defend Gaddafi? Could it be that he is beholden to the old dictator and terrorist-supporter? Is there a missed story here? Was it Gaddafi who financed Chávez, and has he perhaps also financed FARC? Many questions, but let’s start with the observable facts.

As Libya has been in full uprising, media have not been allowed in. Except for TeleSur from Venezuela, that is. The satellite-TV 24/7 “news” channel sent a reporter who reported from Tripoli that “all is calm”. His version of events has precisely so much to to with reality as the infamous press conferences by Saddam’s minister of information.

While a pro-Chávez site like Narco News tries to explain this away, as having nothing to do with the political leadership, and nothing to do with the poor “journalists” in TeleSur, it defies credibility that all is the fault of some anonymous “middle management”. Even more incredulous is the suggestion that the reason the management has not been able to correct this error in reporting is that the head of TeleSur doesn’t have enough time for the network, since he is also the minister of information(!).

Hang on, doesn’t that raise any red flag to Narco News? This is a major story: Hugo Chávez’s information minister is the head of the multi-national TV “news” network that is forming the way western media reports about most events in Latin America. If that is not a Ministry of Propaganda, I don’t know what is. Let me just take one example. When the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was arrested by the military on an order from the Supreme Court, a decision backed up by all institutions of the state, it was none other than TeleSur who chose to label it a “military coup”.

It was also TeleSur who sent the vast majority of reports from the unfolding events in Honduras after June 28th. As I have blogged about extensively, they staged events, they chased away other journalists to avoid having witnesses to the fake media stories, and they cooperated with Hugo Chávez and Manuel Zelaya in doing this. For the European and North American media to have swallowed their story-line was a major propaganda victory for them. An even bigger victory it was that they managed to make a large part of the Honduran population believe in their spin (even among the majority who agree that it was correct to depose Zelaya there are many who believe it was a military coup).

It was, again, TeleSur who pumped out the false story that the protests against Correa in Ecuador was an attempted coup d’état, as exposed – again – by Narco News, still a Chávez-supporting site mind you. In this case they blamed the spin on Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who has become deeply involved in the propaganda apparatus of the Chávez regime.

TeleSur has thus been a huge success for Chávez as a propaganda tool. With the help of it, he has managed to control the news not just in Latin America, but in the case of Honduras in the whole world. In every single country in the entire world – including a substantial part of Honduras itself! That would be amazing for a news outlet, but even more so for what now has been nakedly de-masked as a pure propaganda outlet for the regime.

However, their reporting from Tripoli has been received rolling on the floor laughing, even in Caracas. The entire credibility of TeleSur is down the drain, and I doubt very much that any, and I say any, even their ally al Jazeera, would touch their stories again.

So why did Chávez, and his “information” minister Izarra, sacrifice this priceless asset? He is basically throwing in the towel on trying to export his “21st Century Socialism” to other countries, because without an overwhelming propaganda campaign, it just can’t be done. So what was so valuable?

There are some options to consider. Maybe he was concerned that the oil prize would skyrocket if Gaddafi fell. It would hurt Venezuela, because Chávez has sold oil contracts beyond what he can deliver, for a price that is below today’s market price, so he has to purchase the difference on the spot market. Thus, the higher the oil price, the more Venezuela loses.

Or maybe he is afraid of the Arab virus jumping the Atlantic. There is a growing resistance against him in Venezuela (#OperacionLibertad; another one just showed up on the Internet with the aim of deposing Castro on Cuba). The TeleSur spin could be aimed at discrediting his home-grown opposition, which has whole-heartedly supported the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and of course Libya.

But there is also that third explanation, the most scary one: That it actually was Gaddafi who secretly backed Chávez so he could come to power in an election, when his coup d’état in 1992 failed. It is no secret that Chávez and Gaddafi are pals. It is no secret that their respective foreign departments have remained in close contact through this crisis (it has openly been declared in Caracas). And now this blatant lying from TeleSur, under the direct control of Chávez’s own minister of propaganda, I mean “information”. What is it they say about the one that talks like a chicken, walks like a chicken, looks like a chicken?

Update May 21, 2010, 15:23 – A German-Danish revolutionary-romantic, Johannes Wilm, has made a documentary about this attack, called La Joven Revolución Hondureña (The Young Honduran Revolution). The footage follows the organizers before, during, and after the operation. We can see in the video several of the persons involved in destroying the fast food restaurant. There are two student organizations involved, FUR and FRU (also known as FRUM it seems). The students had committed to show up with 150 persons, and an organization of workers with another 150. The video shows how they blocked the main road past the university, a 4 lane road, with burning tires, and how they planned to run into the university and change shirts to disappear when the police showed up. The video does not seem to show how the car below was set on fire, but in a split second a person in red shirt is seen carrying a big bat, around that time and place.

Original post August 6, 2009, 00:16 – During Wednesday a mob created a roadblock outside UNAH, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras. A group calling itself F.R.U., Frente de Reforma Universitaria (Front for University Reform) has claimed responsibility. According to the police they broke windows and burned a car. They did not let independent journalists photograph or videotape them, but called them “golpistas” (coup-makers) and broke their cameras. The police dispersed the mob with water cannons and tear gas, under an intense bombardment of stones.

According to F.R.U., though, it was students who were demonstrating peacefully, just to be chased away into the university campus. Once there the rector came out, arms in the air, to make peace but beaten by the police, it is claimed. The burning car is blamed on a tear gas grenade.

Burning car outside UNAH, Tegucigalpa

A closer examination of F.R.U., whose logotype leads the thoughts to Maoism and North Korea, shows that the website has had only 8935 visitors, that there are only a few posts on the discussion list (all read only a dozen times and none having got any comments), and that all of them are written by the same person, who is anonymous and hidden behind a gas mask. There is nothing that suggests a political platform, or any physical persons behind the alleged organization. There is, however, a link to TeleSUR’s webcast, the propaganda channel of Chávez.

Protesters at UNAH. Do these look like students to you?

Given that the protesters also look to old to be students, and as if they have arrived from outside, the conclusion can only be one: It was a brownshirt operation, the usual suspects that Chávez hires, in collusion with TeleSUR, the satellite TV channel of Hugo Chávez based in Venezuela.

Luckily most media in the world seem to have started to understand that there is something fishy about the reporting by TeleSUR, so very few have picked up on this story. An exception is Al Jazeera.

This video I saw on CNN as it happened, although only from point 4 below. It took place in El Paraiso, when Zelaya was attempting to cross into Honduras at Las Manos. It was shot by TeleSUR, the international TV channel of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. The video shows how Zelaya-supporters are pushed away by anti-riot forces. It was shown as an example of how the “repressive military” attacked the ‘unarmed” and “peaceful” demonstrators. But now the video has been analyzed by the newspaper La Prensa in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Since the video is in Spanish I will explain.
Observation nr 1: There are zelayistas hidden in the van. A person screams “they are shooting!”
Observation nr 2: There is a bullet hole in the windshield of the van, even though the riot forces are on the opposite side of the vehicle.
Observation nr 3: Note how a shot is fired from inside the van, from the floor in front of the seats.
Observation nr 4: The sympathizers with Zelaya now emerge from the van, and others appear to stand in firing position.
Observation nr 5: The person with a Zelaya hat also appears to be in firing position, and he is carrying a firearm.
Observation nr 6: When he ran one could hear the clinging of metal, and then laughter is heard.

Myself I couldn’t hear the sound of metal, but I did hear something that was not commented in the video: As they are running along the wall, a person asks the cameraman twice, “¿Te quedó bueno?” That is, he wanted to know if he had got a good scene, if it had turned out as planned, but didn’t realize that the camera was still running. Another indication that the whole event was staged for propaganda purposes.

After having seen the impression the video has had over the world, and how it was created, can one but laugh? As Abraham Lincoln said, “It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

This frame shows a bullet being fired through the windshield from inside the car

It should be pointed out that almost all TV scenes that have been shown about riots in Honduras abroad are shot by TeleSUR, even most of what has been shown by CNN en Español. The reason is that the Zelaya supporters chase away all the others with threat of violence, leaving only TeleSUR with access to the events. This may well be a deliberate strategy, since both TeleSUR and the zelayistas ultimately take order from the same man, Hugo Chávez.

När man sett vilket intryck videon har gjort över världen, och vet hur falsk den var, kan man annat än skratta? Som Abraham Lincoln sa, “It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

Ulf Erlingsson

Purpose

This blog was originally set up to inform about the events of the political crisis in Honduras 2009, and that information can still be found in the archives. The content gradually shifted to debate reforms aimed at increasing democracy under the rule of law, and thus raise the standard of living for all in the country. Among the crucial factors for sustainable development we find science. It is maintained by Ulf Erlingsson, D.Sc.